RIVER-SCAPES: Politics of Mobility in Colonial Iberian Waterways (1750-1840)

The politics of mobility is one of the EU's primary challenges.

The right of its citizens to free movement, the 2015 European migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, and the recent Ukrainian refugee crisis underscore the varied and complex access to mobility—referred to as regimes of mobility—and highlight the intricacies of mobility politics. But how was mobility managed before the advent of the liberal state?

What were the mobility regimes in European colonial borderlands?

RIVER-SCAPES examines the regimes and politics of mobility in two late-eighteenth-century rivers claimed by the Spanish and Portuguese empires.

Considering the long-term impacts of these systems on their landscapes, this project explores the politics of mobility in the Mississippi and Zambezi rivers, focusing on: 1) the diversity of mobility experiences in colonial river regions and the role of power dynamics associated with them; and 2) the processes by which politics of mobility were produced, shaped, and negotiated by various institutions and actors.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, which includes history, mobility studies and blue humanities, RIVER-SACPES addresses three pertinent issues for the European agenda: the differentiated experiences of movement, the significance of rivers, and the impact of European colonial heritage on global mobility politics.

By historicising the politics of mobility in the Mississippi and Zambezi rivers, this project aims to foster a debate on the connections between the Global North and Global South, mobility, and riverscapes.